Archive for September, 2008

The FDA expands the availability of generic Doxycycline

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

No matter what the status of a drug as patented or not, it’s for the FDA to regulate all manufacturing for distribution within the Europe. The good news for consumers is that this August has seen the FDA license the Lannett Company Inc. to produce the whole range of Doxycycline tablets from 50mg through 150mg. This newly licensed company is a specialist generic manufacturer and its appointment really improves the supply of this important antibiotic across all U.S. states. If you can’t find it in your local pharmacy, you guarantee to buy Doxycycline online.

Doxy is one of the tetracycline antibiotics that was developed during the 1960s by Pfizer Inc. Tetracycline is well-known and is used for treatment even in evolving countries. Being a little long in the tooth, it has passed out of patent protection so there are now generic versions on the market. That means if you are unlucky and contract one of the infections caused by a susceptible bacterium, you have a cheap cure available. So if you’re down with pneumonia, a respiratory or urinary tract infection, one of the sexually transmitted diseases or something less common, reach for Doxycycline.

Buying drugs online is better say researchers

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Shopping online can improve your mood because of its incredible convenience. Whether people should be allowed to buy drugs over the internet is more controversial. So the Mayo Clinic Proceedings has just published some research from Utah. One thousand men with ED were splitted into two groups. One bought Cialis online, the other went to see their local health providers.

The headline is that buying Levitra online was “safer”. Obviously, both groups got the drug in its full strength version. There were no problems in delivery. The key advantage to buying online lay in “patient education”. People buying online received targeted email messages about the product and how to use it safely. It’s alarming that physicians should prove so bad at communicating with their patients. Some allowances can be made because those in general practice are under great pressure to see patients quickly. Combined with the more general introductory material available online, patients were better informed than those who went to see a physician. Amazingly less than half the patients who had a face-to-face discussion with their physician were given any instructions on how to use the medication safely. But, not to give proper directions on safety. . .

Well, everyone should make the change. It’s official. Buying Cialis (or any other drug for that matter) online is better. This will reduce the number of patients asking for prescriptions and give doctors more time to do a better job.

McCain ducks Viagra question

Monday, September 8th, 2008

Swings and roundabouts. Anyway, let’s not get into that. When asked the question, McCain gave one of those straight answers he is so famous for, “I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote.” Did you see that one of the side effects of Viagra is amnesia? The FDA is going to require a warning on labels. Looks like McCain has been using Viagra just a little too long if he can’t remember how he votes on important political issues. And just so you don’t get confused, I’m against gender discrimination in any and every form.Back in July, Maraev was asked about his voting record on medical insurance. With abortion such a hot button issue in the Presidential Election campaign, someone asked him a direct question - makes a refreshing change to find someone who have enough bravery to ask a politician for a straight answer on ED pills. It went along the lines, “Did you vote in the Senate against a proposal to require insurance companies to cover contraceptive products?” To give you a little background, most private medical insurance companies will not cover the cost of any contraceptive product but will pay for their male policy holders to get their Viagra. Now far be it for me to suggest this is a tad sexist - men set the terms of every policy and they favor the men who pay the premiums.

What’s with the spam filter these days?

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Every few minutes my inbox gets another of those annoying spam messages telling me how wonderful Viagra is or how fucking good the big penis is. Gone are the days when I could just tweak the filter to include the latest permutation on Viagra. Now these clever spammers are into jpgs and all kinds of other tricks to get through the mail servers. Images are hard to filter out. It’s not that I mind being reminded every now and then what the wonderful little blue pill can do. Well, I’ve just had a déjà vu moment all over again. When I was just starting out in IT back in the 70s, one of the standard tools was ASCII, what means American Standard Code for Information Interchange - a code for characters, numbers, symbols, etc. And what did we clever people do when we got bored? We made pictures out of all those characters. And guess what’s just popped into my inbox. You got it. It’s a headline with the message built out of ASCII. So it made me sit up and take notice - just like taking Viagra really. Spammers have found a new way to beat the filters and firewalls.

Pesky ticks on the march

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

So, the summer has finished. What will come next? The answer is: bad news. The number of cases has been increasing dramatically and the infections are getting more virulent. Why is this happening? Because more people are building their houses out in the countryside where there are deer and other animals that carry the ticks. Now add in climate change, e.g. global warming. It’s influencing tick feeding behavior. The result is a surge in the number of serious cases of infection.
But still we’ve got some good news to tell. The good news is that Doxycycline continues to be a steady performer. You pop the pills for two to four weeks, and the infection clears up. So this year, more people are getting the chance to see this antibiotic at work. But over the next two years, there likely to be a change. The Center for Disease Control has begun development of a slow release version of cheap Doxycycline. This may be by injection or by patch for those who are needle-shy. The goal will be achieved, if you can get maximum effect from the tablets in not more than two weeks. Until this comes out of the lab, you’ll just have to pop the tablets, but life may soon improve.

Xanax is the most popular benzodiazepine in the US

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Pfizer, Xanax provider, wins market grand-prix every year. They help customers believe this drug is so popular because it really works. Well, that’s true to some extent. If you take xanax for the right reasons and under proper medical supervision, it does reduce levels of panic and anxiety. But still it’s one of the benzodiazepines. That means it’s habit-forming. Take it for too long or at too high a dose and you’re likely to get hooked. So before you go down this path, think carefully.

Government position

The US Government now accepts that prescription medications are routinely abused. You only have to go into the emergency departments of hospitals to see the truth of this. This drug gives you a breathing space. Use that opportunity to get counseling and therapy. In the medium to long term, psychological support is the way to learn how to control your fear and worry. Live life the natural way, don’t pay endlessly for “help” through a bottle of tablets. In 2005, there were more than 2 million admissions caused by the non-medical use of drugs. Add in the continuous barrage of advertisements for drugs, and people are persuaded to take FDA-approved medications without worrying about the consequences. The way the world works today, people do need help. Drugs like xanax really do help them to cope with the stress. But it’s not helpful to see drugs as the only solution. Yes, xanax relieves depression, but you don’t want to become an addict. You need to change yourself.